Ramping Your Brand

How to Ride the Killer CPG Growth Curve

By: James F. Richardson

Narrated by: Dr. James F. Richardson

"I wish I'd had this book 20 years ago." (John Foraker, CEO of Once upon a Farm, former CEO of Annie's Homegrown)

"I wish I'd read this book before coaching teams with CPG startups." (Tom Eisenmann, Howard H. Stevenson professor of business administration, Harvard Business School)

"This book provides an excellent framework for building a consumer brand in the 2020s." (Mike Mauze, general partner of VMG Partners)

Do you want exponential growth? In this book, Dr. James Richardson outlines a four-part approach to thinking smarter about growth as a CPG entrepreneur. It is based on years of anthropological research into how and why consumers pay for premium-priced CPG items and intensive 4P pattern analysis among an elite club of premium CPG brands that all reached $100M+ in less than a decade.

Part one - Designing to Command a Premium: This is where many founders fail without realizing it. There is a cultural logic behind premium products that grow extremely fast. You should learn it.

Part two - Managing a Small Experiment: Don’t hit the gas too early. Successful CPG startups manage a rolling, iterative experiment until key KPIs appear. You should learn this art.

Part three - Fine Tuning the Conversion Playbook: Steady velocity growth is essential to ramping your brand. Your team needs to learn the art of sustaining it in key geographies so that you don’t have to buy premature distribution to obtain growth.

Part four - Accelerating to Scale: There are three best practices in acceleration. Two of them are counterintuitive to CPG veterans without expertise in the ramping of premium CPG businesses. You need to learn how to deploy them.

©2019, 2025 James F. Richardson (P)2025 James F. Richardson

A Must for Increasing Chances for Scaling Success

Dr. Richardson has advised the world’s top CPG brands. Through his advisory roles and deep study of CPG brands, Dr. Richardson has put together principals and best practices for sustainable scale.

Ramping Your Brand will make it crystal clear there’s more to explosive growth than merely getting onto as many shelves as possible. It’s not about landing the shelves; it’s the strategic steps taken BEFORE landing the shelves that will determine whether your brand will remain on those shelves. And Dr. Richardson does a superb job laying out the key steps that will help premium brands create scale that’s sustainable. After all, what good is landing 10,000 shelves when you’re unable to sustain 9,500 of those shelves?

Dr. Richardson narrates the boatload of gems in a personable and at times playful tone. Personally I find it refreshing to listen to an academic with personality.

Dr. Richardson mentions in his Acknowledgments that his wife allowed him to pull equity from his home to fund the research and development of this book. Certainly illustrates that Dr. Richardson is a firm believer in the content of this book that he’s willing to back it with personal equity. A clear illustration of generosity with respect to his industry knowledge and expertise.

A must audiobook for entrepreneurs who seek to increase their chances for scaling success!

Thank you for this audiobook, Dr. Richardson

Straight up, Informative

The author is very straightforward, doesn't soften things. Which, in my opinion is great.

He tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.

He provides information on different stages of growth for CPG companies.

This is the best and most well rounded CPG focused book I have read so far. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested or currently a part of the CPG industry.

Definetly worth listening to 2 or 3 times. he covers a lot of ground.

Simples mas não fácil

Tenho uma empresa neste segmento e estou aplicando os ensinamentos da maneira que entendi. Parece estar funcionando… fase 1 ON!
I hope I don’t fall on my ass very soon.
I will be back here on each fase end.🙏🏽😉

A Must Read for Premium CPG Brand Founders

A Must Read for Premium CPG Brand Founders. Walks you through the dos and don'ts of launching and growing.

Extremely Insightful

Highly recommended to anyone in, or looking to get into, the CPG space. Great book.

Excellent book on the industry

This is a great book on CPG full of unique and valuable insights. Very candid and lots of useful examples - would definitely recommend

Perhaps Best CPG Book I’ve Ever Read

Brilliant. Have already passed along to all my fellow entrepreneur friends. After working in the food / supplement CPG space for the last 10 years and now starting a brand of my own - I couldn’t agree more with the points made in this book! Great stuff. Will be tuning into the podcast

Excellent perspective

Dr James dissects the CPG industry at a level which is severely lacking in a world of data analysis paralysis. He looks at it from a humanistic perspective, with data support, to demonstrate why the sales process starts in the consumers’ home and NOT in test kitchens or board rooms.

Extremely valuable content delivered with some humor

If this content is relevant to you, purchase this ASAP. I saw comments of others who didn’t enjoy the performance. I felt quite the opposite. In fact, I’ve never felt compelled to comment on performance before. The narrator added a lot of fun and memorability to this title.

Was An Excellent Explanation for Just Diving in

I’m so glad I read this book before making some of the mistakes he mentioned in going too big too fast and not being able to meet demand. This book has everything to understand how to avoid getting in trouble, who to be wary of, and aiming to grow consistently without getting distracted by things that don’t make a difference.